The Hard Truth about Child Slavery

Global
Child Slavery Facts:

Global
Child Slavery Facts:

These child slavery facts may astound you,
but in reality, what they show is encouraging although the results are too slow
for comfort. There are still far too many children suffering from the worst
forms of Child Labor.

There has been a 22% decrease
in the number of child laborers around the world.

Since 2000, the number of child
laborers has gone down from 248 million children to 168 million in 2013.

85 million of these children
are involved in hazardous work.

As of 2012, the highest number
of child laborers, an estimated 59 million, can be found in the Sub Saharan
Region.

The Agriculture Sector is still
where the largest number of Child Laborers can be found. 98 million can be
found in Agriculture, 54 million in Services and 12 million in Industry.

In 2012, the following
countries were listed as the worst countries for child laborers:

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and North Korea. The rest are all in
Africa: DR Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Zimbabwe.

Children as young as 5 years
old are forced to operate tools and machinery, mines, factories and farms. They
are exposed to harmful chemicals and toxins that puts their health at risk.

On average, they work 12 hours
a day, 26 days a month. In extreme cases, they work more hours.

An estimated 12% of children in
India, ages 5 to 14 are engaged in child labor – making carpets.

To end child labor would cost
$760 billion over a 20 year period.

Most of these child laborers
are sold to traffickers by people that they know… and even by their own
parents.

Due to anti-sweatshop
agreements, there are 28 million less children working in sweatshops now than 4
years ago.

When
will all Children be FREE?

We’d like to think that we have become a
sophisticated and informed society but we might want to reconsider that
premise. Until child slavery exists, until we find a way to protect our future
generation, we cannot claim to be a progressive species. Poverty, hunger, lack
of education and opportunities – all of these factors are being blamed for the
presence of child slavery in our society. However, if the whole world came
together and seriously and cooperatively acted on the solutions, we believe
that we can do something about it.